CONTEMPT OF CERTAIN PROFESSIONS — HUTS. 59 
over their beds to remind them that their chains will be 
rivetted on anew, if they are guilty of any act of tyranny 
towards free men. 
Every nation has its prejudices : one of those which the 
JololFs have preserved to this day, and which is common to 
most of the neighbouring- Negro tribes, is so thorough a con- 
tempt for blacksmiths, weavers, shoemakers and griots or 
musicians, that even a slave will not marry a woman descended 
from a family which has exercised one of these professions. 
The griots are even excluded from the honour of burial among 
the Joloffs. Their bodies are deposited in hollow trees ; for 
the general notion is, that if a griot were to be interred in the 
earth, the crop of millet would be sure to fail. 
The Negroes preserve their pedigrees with care : they are 
very proud of their origin, and never degrade themselves by 
marriages with persons of inferior rank. Mahometans rarely 
unite themselves to the daughters of Pagans. 
The huts of, the Joloffs are extremely simple, but com- 
pactly built, and most of them afford shelter from rain. 
They are constructed of rushes only, and a door of straw is 
their only safeguard. The walls are so slight that people may 
converse through them. The form of these habitations is cir- 
cular, and at a distance, the huts of the villages of Cayor might 
be mistaken for bee hives ; you are obliged to stoop in order 
to enter. Every Joloff, however poor, has at least two huts ; 
he sleeps in one, and the other serves for a kitchen. Notwith^ 
I 2 
